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Sleep

Snoring can sound comical, but it isn’t funny being kept awake night after night and it can put a strain on your health and your relationship. It is very difficult to feel loving towards someone who keeps you awake all night while they are enjoying blissful sleep.

There are two aspects to how snoring can affect sleep: one is from the perspective of the snorer and one is their unlucky bed companion. Sometimes the snorer will wake themselves up, or suffer from sore throats. Often, however, the snorer is completely unaware of the problem. Not-so their partner.

Snoring can be defined as a coarse sound made by vibrations of the soft palate and other tissue in the mouth, nose & throat (upper airway). It is caused by turbulence inside the airway as you breathe.

If you are the snorer, there can be a number of physical reasons which are causing your snoring. Often it is exacerbated by alcohol, weight, smoking or medication. Other physical causes of snoring can vary from mispositioned jaw, blocked sinuses, allergies, deviated septum, polyps, the size or position of the tongue, or narrow airways.

Often, just changing your sleep position and/or losing weight will help to resolve the problem. Other remedies include stopping smoking, reducing your alcohol intake and treating allergies. Occasionally the problem can be rectified, with either a mouth guard, or through surgery, depending on the cause of the snoring.

If your partner snores and you find yourself staring at the ceiling night after night thinking murderous thoughts, the issue is more around your focus. I remember living under a flight path for several years. Planes, including Concorde, would fly over every 3 minutes and we thought we would go crazy. In time, we learned how to tune out and pause before resuming our conversation like nothing had happened. You have also probably had the experience where you have a headache or a toothache, but some good news or a funny program on the TV, makes you forget all about it. These are all examples of changing focus.

So, instead of waiting for the snoring to start – which makes you hyper-sensitive to it – focus your attention on something else. Self-hypnosis is a terrific way of doing this. Self-hypnosis can be used simply to relax, or to get you to focus on something else – a change you want to make perhaps. You might also want to think about having hypnotherapy with a professional who can help you to not notice the snoring so that you can enjoy a restful and restorative sleep. My book "An Inside Job" teaches you how to do this for yourself simply and effectively and even has a CD to guide your self-hypnosis practice. Another option is to listen to a hypnosis recording such as Sleep Well which will ease you into relaxing sleep.